FUNNY GAMES

SYNOPSIS:
Classical music plays on the car stereo, as Anna (Susanne
Lothar), Georg (Ulrich Mûhe) and their young son Georgie
(Stefan Clapczynski) drive up to their idyllic lakeside holiday
house. They make plans to go yachting and play golf with
neighbours, everything seems set for a peaceful weekend away. But
around sunset Peter, an apparently amiable if awkward young
stranger, knocks at the back door and asks to borrow some eggs.
This seemingly innocent request turns out to be the first move in
a calculated and elaborate attack on the family mounted by Peter
and his more suave friend Paul – an attack which gradually
proceeds from polite intimidation to prolonged bouts of physical
and psychological torture. As the immaculately courteous pair of
psychopaths occasionally remind us, everything that happens is
being stage-managed for the benefit of us, the audience. After
all, aren't these elaborate scenes of violence what we've been
waiting for all along?

"Since Michael Haneke's film is basically an attack on
the audience, it's hard to talk about without seeming either
defensive or obtuse. Haneke deliberately makes it impossible for
us to separate his own 'funny games' from those played by his
onscreen envoys, the smarmy hoodlums who spend the film torturing
an innocent family for our delectation. Refusing to motivate his
thugs in any psychological sense, Haneke instead stresses the
constructed nature of what takes place. Peter and Paul literally
wink at the cameras, inviting our complicity. At first
ingeniously sinister, the film quickly becomes both distressing
and insultingly cute, which is presumably the point. Haneke sets
out to confront the audience with the ugliness of its desire for
onscreen violence; Funny Games is a travesty of a thriller. (With
its classical music, attractive scenery and well-bred, photogenic
characters, it more maliciously travesties the bourgeois art film
as well.) Individual viewers have to decide for themselves here,
but I don't know that Haneke's strategic representations of
violence and suffering are any less trivialising of real-life
torture and murder than are the absurdist fictions of, say,
Quentin Tarentino – who in turn isn't simply the flip sadist
he's sometimes supposed to be. Which is to say that in neither
art films nor Hollywood entertainment is it easy to depict evil
while securely retaining the moral high ground. But it's
precisely that unavoidable slippage and ambiguity that makes this
fairly dubious film to some extent an interesting, troubling
experience."Jake Wilson

"Jake’s response to this film is probably not
unique, and audiences will indeed have to do a bit of analysis
and introspection on the proferred subject of screen violence.
But I have a slightly different view. In his dreadfully
uncomfortable film, Haneke has isolated a unique kind of violence
and it is emotionally and psychologically vastly different to
mainstream movie screen violence. To me, this rather defeats the
purpose, because we are let off the hook; this is something
OTHER. Worse, perhaps. This is extreme cruelty, and presented as
coming from a psychological void: there are no reasons or
motivations for the actions. There is one scene (I won’t
spoil it) near the end where Haneke shows exactly what he means
us to feel (physical revenge), but this is a single, isolated
instance. Haneke’s calculating, often static camera,
observes coldly, sometimes in extreme close up, often holding a
shot for extended periods. The aftermath of violence, its effects
on the innocent family, is what Haneke wants us to watch and
experience, long enough to have it seep into our own psyche. It
is superbly acted (especially by Susanne Lothar) and designed,
the direction is single minded, but it will not make you feel
good. Strictly for the dedicated film buff. Discuss."
Andrew L. Urban

"It's a mystery why this film was picked up for
Australian distribution, as it remains another pointless,
self-indulgent piece of clap trap on the nature of the media and
its relation to violence. Two seemingly pleasant chaps invade a
bourgeois family's country home and relentlessly torture them
with devastating results. Ugly, mindless with pretensions of
intellect, the film is an amoral, barbaric work that seems so out
of kilter in a society addicted to senseless violence. The film
was booed by the festival audience, an appropriate
response."
Paul Fischer